Lol I love how etresoft says "the WORST thing you can do is blame Apple." it's like it's his worst nightmare. Anyway, like you said etresoft, no company had seen the iPad beforehand. Nobody could've foreseen the crazy new wifi technology embedded into the iPad that would only work with certain routers and certain networks.

Yet the blame isn't Apple. It's not their fault that they kept secret about the iPad. The network companies should've stolen the iPad months ago so they could prepare their technology for the routers.... And honestly people.... That 2 month old router is OUTDATED... And seriously... FiOS? Who cares about FiOS users.

dubgiant90 wrote:... Nobody could've foreseen the crazy new wifi technology embedded into the iPad that would only work with certain routers and certain networks.

The iPad uses the Broadcom BCM4329 chip for WiFi & Bluetooth communications. This is the same chip that is used in the current iPhone and iPod Touch. The BCM4329 implements WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n with very low power consumption. This same chip is used in many other devices. There is no "crazy new wifi technology" in the iPad. That's why most iPad users aren't having any WiFi problems.

In any event, some Hotel and other "free" WiFi services utilize web browser sign-on pages or terms-of-use agreement pages which must be gotten through to get internet access. This sort of thing is not a part of the WiFi standard and is a bit of a kludge. It is known that the Safari "Autofill" feature can interfere with some of these and turning it OFF may get around this. However, if there is something in this type of implementation which looks for a specific browser type (like Internet Explorer) or uses something not implemented on the iPad (e.g., Flash, Java, etc.) then the service may not work with the iPad.

I haven't had any problems with public WiFi hot spots with my iPad but, of course, I've only used a small fraction of them.

Ran more test last night and came up with some interesting results. I connected my Airport Express Router to the network. Then connected the iPad to the Apple Wireless network. Ran Safari and it took me to the Airport Lounge Login Page, but this time it went through and I could access the Internet. Where I thought it was a Nomadix (Authenication Server) problem it turns out it's probably a Cisco Access Point problem (we have 3 CISCO 801.11A/G AP INT RADIOS ANTS D CIS-AIR-AP1131AG-A-K9). Going to run further tests this morning. I'll let you all know what I find.

Hi there. Posting from a Starbucks... and from my iPad. The autofill workaround worked fine, so thank you guys.

Just to clarify, I don't blame Apple. But when all devices but one (that, as someone said, has the same chipset as the iPhone) work and disabling a feature makes this one work, I think the problem is on Apple's side, not the (many) WiFi providers.

But I'm sure they will solve it soon, and disabling autofill is something that I can live with.

Just to add to my previous post I did manage to get it working eventually but had to bodge the solution. I was lucky enough to have several other devices including an iphone that wee able to successfully connect and get to the browser logon screen. For some reason the ipad did not seem to get a valid ip address. So I looked at the ip config on the other devices and then manually entered an ip for the (valid) wifi connection (as high up in the range I could find to ensure it would not create a duplicte ip issue). Pointed the iPad to an external site... and bingo got the hotels broadband login screen. I have read elsewhere that there are some issues with dhcp and iPads. My thoughts here was that this is what caused my problem. The (somewhat bodged) manual setup allowed me to work but I think it is an issue with the (Cisco) dhcp server and the iPad's dhcp client. Its clearly not an issue on the iphone as it worked fine there. It begs the question... is the iPhone dhcp client a later release to the one shipped on the iPad?

Don't worry. Steve jobs couldn't connect his iPhone to the wifi router today at WWDC. Of course all the apple fanboys will say it was the router. Funny they didn't replace their router before the show.

dubgiant90 wrote:... Nobody could've foreseen the crazy new wifi technology embedded into the iPad that would only work with certain routers and certain networks.

The iPad uses the Broadcom BCM4329 chip for WiFi & Bluetooth communications. This is the same chip that is used in the current iPhone and iPod Touch. The BCM4329 implements WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n with very low power consumption. This same chip is used in many other devices. There is no "crazy new wifi technology" in the iPad. That's why most iPad users aren't having any WiFi problems.

In any event, some Hotel and other "free" WiFi services utilize web browser sign-on pages or terms-of-use agreement pages which must be gotten through to get internet access. This sort of thing is not a part of the WiFi standard and is a bit of a kludge. It is known that the Safari "Autofill" feature can interfere with some of these and turning it OFF may get around this. However, if there is something in this type of implementation which looks for a specific browser type (like Internet Explorer) or uses something not implemented on the iPad (e.g., Flash, Java, etc.) then the service may not work with the iPad.

I haven't had any problems with public WiFi hot spots with my iPad but, of course, I've only used a small fraction of them.

Notice the end of my post.

End sarcasm lol.. I was being sarcastic. I know the wifi is very basic technology in the iPad. Etresoft wanted to point out how its some new technology that companies need to update their gear for.

You have my sympathy. I have tried to use my iPad at quite a number of locations in US, UK and Italy over the last few weeks and have probably had a 75% success rate, however, when it wouldn't connect in hotels it was quite frustrating as my iPhone would connect.

The issue was outside of the hotels experience/ability to solve and I didn't have the time to solve it. My guess is that some settings somewhere were not allowing the iPad to connect. I hope that as iPads become more prevalent that these issues get resolved either by the network owners or Apple in the case of the known device/OS issue.

No one likes carrying a brick, even one that plays music and displays great photos

I've been having the same issue with connecting to a hotel's wi-fi and could never get past their pop-up login screen but once or twice the past couple months. I read the post about turning off the auto-fill options and it worked first time. To test the theory, I rebooted the ipad with the options on and had the same error. I then turned the auto-fill option off and it worked immediately. Odd, but it fixed the problem.

I was at a hospital clinic today that had a wireless network with ssid GUEST. I tried to connect and got a login webpage. I tried the obvious guest/password but nothing seemed to happen. I put in some gibberish and got login incorrect, so I think I guessed right, but still nothing happened. Didn't want to ask b.c everyone was real busy and I figured they had better things to do than help me test my iPad.

dearlt wrote:I was at a hospital clinic today that had a wireless network with ssid GUEST. I tried to connect and got a login webpage. I tried the obvious guest/password but nothing seemed to happen. I put in some gibberish and got login incorrect, so I think I guessed right, but still nothing happened. Didn't want to ask b.c everyone was real busy and I figured they had better things to do than help me test my iPad.

It was a cisco network fwiw. What should I try next time?

Since the internet service has a login screen turn off the Settings > Safari > Autofill option. This has been known to cause problems with sign-on on some of these services. You might also want to check to see if your user-id/password guess is correct.

OK guys. I am a HUGE fan of Apple products. Own too many to count. As for the Wifi problems... I can confirm. I spent 7 hours at the Denver airport yesterday trying to get online after having just told my boss how much I love my Ipad. After trying everything that I could think of, I went to the airport office and told them about my problem logging on. The nice lady asked me how old my laptop was. When I told her that it was a brand new Ipad, she said that "they don't seem to like our network". I spent the next several hours looking for someone else with an Ipad that may have found a solution. No luck. I called home and asked my daughter to google a solution. Still no luck. Guess I'm back to carrying my lousy laptop around again. BTW The Ipad worked flawlessly at that hotel as it does at home. I'm not sure where the problem lies, but please fix it!

Ugh... What nonsense... What is it with fanbois that they can't discuss these issues without getting emotionally charged? If you can help the guy, post, if not KEEP QUIET! Honestly... I've got an iPhone and ipad and love them both. Apple makes really cool gadgets but they and their fan base are extremely annoying and just plain weird. I find myself rooting for someone to come up with a device for android that comes close to the iPhone in user experience so i can distance myself.

Anyway, to the topic at hand, I'm staying at an extended stay America and had the exact opposite problem as the original poster. My iPad would connect but not my 3GS. I called the customer service number on the card and they gave me a work around. For some reason the login screen wasn't popping up in safari (I made sure autofill was off as well as trying other safari options). Since my iphone was connecting to the network but not logging in (ie it had an ip address, etc) the guy was able to see it on the network and give it access from his end. Working fine now.

So, unfortunately my solution was 'call customer support' but maybe it will help to know that it should be possible to manually give your device access as long as it has been assigned an ip address by the network.

And it certainly seems to me that this is safari/ios4's problem and the (much maligned) hotel customer service tech was able to provide me with a workaround for Apple's malfunctioning device. That's just my objective opinion with no particular emotional attachment.

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